'Lonesome Lloyd' seeking new friends

Rep. Doggett runs for re-election in a newly drawn district.

U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett speaks during Race Unity Day 2011 on Saturday, July 23, at the Villita Assembly Building.

U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett speaks during Race Unity Day 2011 on Saturday, July 23, at the Villita Assembly Building.

Photo: Edward A. Ornelas/eaornelas@express-news.net

Photo: Edward A. Ornelas/eaornelas@express-news.net

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U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett speaks during Race Unity Day 2011 on Saturday, July 23, at the Villita Assembly Building.

U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett speaks during Race Unity Day 2011 on Saturday, July 23, at the Villita Assembly Building.

Photo: Edward A. Ornelas/eaornelas@express-news.net

'Lonesome Lloyd' seeking new friends

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His voice swelling from a lawyerly lilt to an angry yell, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett railed from the House floor last December against a deal President Barack Obama had just reached with Republicans that extended tax cuts for the wealthy.

“This is not fair,” Doggett shouted, “and it will not encourage significant economic growth.”

He has not since quieted his displeasure. Running against state Rep. Joaquín Castro in a new congressional district that includes parts of San Antonio, the liberal Democrat from Austin is displaying many of the same traits that have defined him for decades.

One is a zeal for broadcasting his principles, even if it means criticizing his colleagues. In nearly four decades of public service, such fierce independence has earned him admiration.

It also has earned him a nickname: Lonesome Lloyd.

“Lloyd Doggett is a fearless defender of basic rights and fairness for working people, and he should get enormous credit for that. He will stand up and speak when others won’t,” said  Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic consultant.

“The legitimate complaints about Doggett aren’t about his positions that he takes on issues or his effectiveness in speaking on them. The legitimate complaint with Doggett is that he doesn’t always think outside his own district or think outside his own election as to how you create a majority,” Angle said.

Long a scourge of Republicans, Doggett entered the race for congressional District 35 after the rival party redrew his current district into GOP territory.

Still threatened in courts, the 35th materialized after a boom in the state’s minority population earned Texas four new seats. Solidly Democratic, it’s anchored in San Antonio, where Castro, brother of Mayor Julián Castro, enjoys broad support.

Doggett is accustomed to fighting for his survival.

He was elected to the U.S. House in 1994, the year Republicans seized 54 seats and control of the chamber. Arriving in Congress, Doggett was outspoken — sometimes to the point of combativeness with his own party.

That year, he accused President Bill Clinton of embracing “the Republican agenda.” These days, with the GOP again in control of the House, he’s not giving Obama a break, either.

“The president, I believe, should have resolved the debt ceiling (in December) instead of waiting and giving the crown jewel to the Republicans,” Doggett said recently. “There was too much yielding on a vital point without getting anything in return of significance.”

Of his reputation for aggressive advocacy, Doggett is characteristically unyielding.

“I’m finding many people across San Antonio who want someone to scream and yell about all the wrong that is happening in Washington and all the things that are not being done there,” he said. “And they’re tired of people that give up and give in all the time.”

Filibusters

The bill was going nowhere.

Authored by two Texas senators in the early 1980s, its intent was to provide unemployment benefits to farm workers. But former Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby, a moderate Democrat, seemed determined to kill it.

“Hobby just wouldn’t call the bill up,” said former state Sen. Hector Uribe, a co-author along with former state Sen. Oscar Mauzy. “He didn’t call it until the very last moment of the last day of the legislative session.”

The result was a fatal filibuster. But for Doggett, then a state senator elected at age 26, the fight had just begun.

“It was Lloyd who said, ‘Hector, you need to have a news conference,’” Uribe said. “So Lloyd joined Oscar and me at a news conference at the very end of the legislative session, right at sine die, and we blasted Hobby.”

The bill passed in the next session, an outcome Uribe credits to Doggett’s assertiveness.

By then, Doggett was renowned for his willingness to debate — often as a protector of consumers against big business. He was an architect of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act and helped create a commission to regulate utilities.

Doggett also famously carted a pair of white tennis shoes onto the floor of the Senate chamber whenever he was prepared to filibuster, to stand for hours talking a bill to death or resuscitating it from the brink.

“He would bring out his tennis shoes, put them on his desk,” Uribe said. “Basically, he was telling the members, ‘This is an important issue to me, and we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about it.’ And he would do it.”

‘Titanium backbone’

Doggett has even argued against those with whom he agrees.

After a tough defeat in 1984 in a race for the U.S. Senate, Doggett returned to practicing law. He won another statewide election four years later, this time to the Texas Supreme Court.

Along with votes that reinforced consumer protections, Doggett successfully pushed for more public access to government. Yet by 1992, his relationship with his fellow justices, the majority of them Republicans, had deteriorated so much that Doggett flouted a taboo against personal attacks.

In a concurring opinion, he agreed with the majority that a rape victim could sue the University of Houston for leaving a dormitory door unrepaired. But Doggett blasted his colleagues for delaying the case for 17 months, assailing their opinion as “tardy,” “convoluted,” “strange” and “misleading.”

The majority responded with an appeal to civility.

“To assist in realizing our purpose, this institution, like other deliberative bodies, has developed traditions which engender mutual tolerance and respect and enable its members to work together to accomplish their required tasks,” they wrote.

These days, Doggett’s passion for taking entrenched positions can inspire both praise and condemnation. The trait has taken on new significance in contrast to the politics of Castro, who is seen as more collegial and eager to work with Republicans.

Doggett “has a titanium backbone,” Uribe said. “When you take the sort of milquetoast approach, it’s very easy to be rolled by the other side. At this particular juncture in Washington, I don’t think we need another individual who is not going to be as assertive a congressman as we need in order to have a countervailing force that meets the extreme right-wing positioning that the tea party has dictated to Republican moderates.”

Eugene Sepulveda, a prominent Democratic fundraiser in Austin and supporter of Castro, has a different view.

“He’d argue with a fence post,” Sepulveda said. “He just gets stuck in this mode of arguing. And that’s also why this Congress is so ineffective.”

Opportunity district

Doggett’s confrontational politics took shape in the 1960s at the University of Texas at Austin. As student body president, he presided over a moratorium against the Vietnam War, a stance he would strike again, four decades later, as House leader against the Iraq invasion.

“He helped tremendously,” Means said. “I had a plan for them to go and knock on doors of everybody in East Austin. That’s what they did.”

Doggett says his politics remain progressive.

“This is about being an advocate for those who get left out and left behind in our society, but not limited to minorities,” he said.

Such history is significant, considering the Republican-engineered pickle in which Doggett now finds himself, forced to run in a new district with a minority population of 68 percent. The ethnic makeup has inspired calls for the Anglo congressman to step aside.

“It would be a travesty to not use this opportunity to improve the underrepresentation of Hispanics in Congress,” local state Rep. Mike Villarreal said.

Doggett is responding with a familiar algebra: Letting him lose is letting Republicans win.

He conjures the infamous redrawing of districts in 2003, when former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay stretched the only viable Democratic district in Texas into a so-called “fajita strip” from Travis County to the Rio Grande Valley.

The move left Doggett little choice but to face a Hispanic opponent in a district more than 70 percent minority. Campaigning determinedly, he won anyway.

“I’ve been in exactly this position,” Doggett said. “The whole goal here is to get me with as many people who don’t know me as possible.”

His strategy now is the same: relentless public appearances.

Some local politicos are supportive, such as Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Adkisson. Others are annoyed.

District 1 Councilman Diego Bernal was at a local pizzeria in August attending a benefit for a 6-year-old boy killed in an apartment fire when Doggett showed up with aides and campaign buttons, he said.

“I thought it was distasteful,” Bernal said. “I certainly don’t think an event for a child who so recently and tragically passed away is a place to campaign.”

Campaign cash

Doggett’s 1984 loss to Phil Gramm taught him a lesson in amassing and conserving cash, he said. In that race, Gramm spent about $10 million to Doggett’s nearly $6 million.

Doggett now sits on a campaign war chest of more than $3 million. At the same time, he’s known for offering relatively few resources to other Democrats.

“There are various avenues by which people in the House can lead,” said Sean Thierault, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “And one of the avenues is they can raise lots of money and then they can pass it out. And he has chosen not to use that avenue.”

Doggett calls the critique “phony,” noting that he pays his dues to the Democratic Party and contributes to colleagues at the national and local levels. His personal net worth, meanwhile, has nearly doubled since he arrived in Washington, growing to somewhere between $8.5 million and $20 million, according to financial disclosure forms.

His portfolio includes investments in oil, banks and pharmaceuticals, the sorts of companies he rails against in Congress as a fiscal hawk wary to part with taxpayer money.

“The reason the Lloyd Doggetts of the world save their money is for races like this, where he’s going to need every dime of it,” Cook said.

The reason: This race is neck-and-neck.

“We have in Lloyd Doggett someone who’s not afraid to stand up and scream bloody murder when he feels like something’s wrong, which is a trait that a lot of voters legitimately respect,” Cook said. “And then you have Castro, who is very nuanced and who is very good at working with the other side without violating his principles, which is another good trait that is respected by voters.

“And to tell you the truth, I have no idea which will win out.”

More Information

Rep. Lloyd Doggett

Born and raised in Austin

Received bachelor of business administration degree, University of Texas at Austin, 1967

Received law degree at UT, 1970

Served in Texas Senate, 1973-85

Authored 124 state laws and sponsored 63 House bills that became law, including the Texas Sunset Act

Texas Supreme Court justice, 1989-94

Congressman since 1995

Serves on House Committee on Ways and Means, ranking member of Human Resources subcommittee